Papers by Richard Howarth
Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, 2012
The English geologist, Frederick Henry Hatch , today mainly recalled for a textbook on igneous pe... more The English geologist, Frederick Henry Hatch , today mainly recalled for a textbook on igneous petrology, emigrated to South Africa, where, in the years between 1892 and 1906, he became one of the pioneers of the geology of the Transvaal and the Witwatersrand Goldfield. This article reviews his life and, in particular, his work during this period which led to his becoming a mining geologist with connections to many of the world's goldfields, set against the political background of the Boer War which influenced the course of his work.
Earth Sciences History, 2007
This two-part review of the development of the measurement of the Earth's gravity field, and its ... more This two-part review of the development of the measurement of the Earth's gravity field, and its application to geology, up to the early 1960s, is intended primarily for an earth-science readership. The focus here is on the pendulum, which played the dominant role in measurement of the intensity of gravity (g), both in absolute (at national observatories) and relative terms (at field stations), until the early twentieth century. Following discovery of the properties of the pendulum and its incorporation in time-keepers, early post-Newtonian investigations used the length of a pendulum beating seconds as a proxy for g. The goal was to obtain ever-improved knowledge of the "Figure of the Earth," initially encapsulated in determination of the degree of flattening of the oblate ellipsoid used as a model for the geometry of the globe. Developments in theory went hand-in-hand with both improvements in pendulum design and the establishment of a constantly expanding network of astrogeodetic stations as a basis for national cartographic surveys. By the late nineteenth century, results from astrogeodetic determinations of the length of a degree of arc and those derived from gravity determinations (by means of Clairaut's theorem) had converged to an inverse flattening of 298, and emphasis switched to determination of the geoid. However, by the 1840s, discrepancies between observed and model-fitted values were providing increasingly strong evidence that geological factors also affected the local value of g. This would give rise to the use of gravity determination as a geological exploration tool in the twentieth century.
The Statistician, 1996
Computerlzed basln analysls : the prognosls of energy and mineral resources I edlted by Jan Harff... more Computerlzed basln analysls : the prognosls of energy and mineral resources I edlted by Jan Harff and Daniel F. Merrlam. p. CN. --(Computer appllcatlons In the earth sclences) "Based on the proceedlngs of an International symposlum ... held Juna 19-22, 1990, In Gustrow, Geruny "--T. p. verso. Includes blbllographlcal references and Index.
Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, Apr 1, 2015
The Richardson Award, for the best paper published annually in the Proceedings of the Geologists'... more The Richardson Award, for the best paper published annually in the Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, was established in 1996. This paper describes the life of the Richardson family: James ('Jim') Richardson, the instigator of the Award, his wife Doris and their only son, Gwyn (who died in infancy). The focus is mainly on Richardson's education in the United Kingdom and early career as a field and mining geologist with the Geological Survey Department of the Federated Malay States (Malaysia) and how, having been caught up in WWII, he and his geological colleagues kept thoughts of geology alive during their time as Prisoners of War under the Japanese in Singapore, Thailand and Burma (1942-45). One of the relatively few survivors of the infamous 'Death Railway', his subsequent career as a petroleum geologist in the Netherlands, Venezuela, USA and Australia; and as a geologist involved in mineral exploration, artist and local historian in Australia is also described.
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Mathematical Geosciences, Sep 1, 1972
The program as published (Howarth, 1971) could give rise to slight scaring errors in the producti... more The program as published (Howarth, 1971) could give rise to slight scaring errors in the production of large maps owing to the use of an integer value in the calculation of the x-and y-axis scaling factors in the subroutine PSCALE. A truncation error would arise in subsequent calculation of the true-scaleplot-scale conversions via the subroutines RCONVR and PCONVR. The following modifications to the program are suggested to remove this source of error.
Encyclopedia of Mathematical Geosciences
Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series, 2020
Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, 2019
Between 1870 and 1896, the American mathematician Robert Jackson Adcock (1826–1895) contributed a... more Between 1870 and 1896, the American mathematician Robert Jackson Adcock (1826–1895) contributed a number of short articles to early mathematical journals such as The Analyst . His biography is given here for the first time. An obscure figure hitherto associated with the history of regression analysis and least-squares, he has, on occasion, been confused with a nephew of the same name. Before the American Civil War, Adcock was first a pupil and then taught at the Western Military Institute, which became the Kentucky Military Institute, near Frankfort, Kentucky. Afterwards, despite occasionally being hospitalized during periods of mental illness, he became a wealthy farmer who could afford mathematical recreation as a hobby. His self-published pamphlet ‘Gravitation to the sphere and the two ellipsoids of revolution’ (1872), recently discovered in the Library of the Royal Society, is discussed in Part I. Here we establish his authorship of all mathematical works by ‘R. J. Adcock’.
Applied geochemistry in the 1980s
Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 1987
ABSTRACT This book explores geochemical achievements in mineral exploration covering both current... more ABSTRACT This book explores geochemical achievements in mineral exploration covering both current exploration status and future potential. Early chapters focus on exploration south of the equator, geochemical patterns in the granite terrain of Zimbabwe, and the special problems of exploring for gold. Other topics include detection of concealed mineral and energy resources by vapor chemistry, future use of inductively-coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry, exploration in the shallow marine environment, deep sea mineral deposits, and geochemistry in relation to animal as well as human health.
Environmental Science & Technology, 2006
Millions of people in Bangladesh have probably switched their water consumption to wells that mee... more Millions of people in Bangladesh have probably switched their water consumption to wells that meet the local standard for As in drinking water of 50 µg/L as a result of blanket field testing throughout the country. It is therefore important to know if As concentrations in those wells could change over time. To address this issue, we report here precise groundwater As analyses for time-series samples collected from a suite of 20 tube wells containing e50 µg/L As and ranging from 8 to 142 m in depth. For 17 out of 20 wells, the standard deviation of groundwater As concentrations was <10 µg/L over the 3-year monitoring period (n ) 24-44 per well). Six of the 17 wells are community wells, each of which serves the needs of several hundred people in particularly affected villages. Of the three wells showing larger fluctuations in chemical composition including As, two are very shallow (8 and 10 m). Variations in As concentrations for one of these wells (50 ( 32 µg/L, n ) 36), as well as another shallow well showing smaller variations (48 ( 5 µg/L, n ) 36), appear to be coupled to seasonal precipitation and recharge linked to the monsoon. The other shallow well showing larger variations in composition indicates a worrisome and steady increase in As concentrations from 50 to 70 µg/L (n ) 36) over 3 years. The time series of As (30 ( 11 µg/L, n ) 24) and other constituents in one deep community well (59 m) show large fluctuations that suggest entrainment of shallow groundwater through a broken PVC pipe. Even though the majority of wells that were initially safe remained so for 3 years, our results indicate that tube wells should be tested periodically.
Mineralogical Magazine, Aug 1, 2007
The Journal of Geology, Mar 1, 2001
based upon it enables straightforward conversion of 87 Sr/ 86 Sr to numerical age, and vice versa... more based upon it enables straightforward conversion of 87 Sr/ 86 Sr to numerical age, and vice versa, for use in strontium isotope stratigraphy (SIS). The table includes 95% confidence intervals on predictions of numerical age from 87 Sr/ 86 Sr. This version includes the Triassic and Paleozoic record (0-509 Ma) omitted from previous versions because of the paucity of adequate data at the time of preparation. We highlight differences between the previous versions of the table and the current version and discuss some aspects of the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr record that may have geological significance. We give examples of how the table can be used and where it has proven useful.
Elsevier eBooks, 2020
Figure 7.1 Variation of 87 Sr/ 86 Sr through Phanerozoic time. LOWESS fit to data sources in Tabl... more Figure 7.1 Variation of 87 Sr/ 86 Sr through Phanerozoic time. LOWESS fit to data sources in Table7.1. The 87 Sr/ 86 Sr value of Sr dissolved in the world's oceans has varied though time, which allows one to date and correlate sediments. This variation and its stratigraphic resolution is discussed and graphically displayed.
(Table 1) Elemental composition, pyrite-Fe and degree of pyritisation in Upper Pliensbachian and Lower Toarcian sediments from the costal section of Yorkshire
Profiles of Mo/total organic carbon (TOC) through the Lower Toarcian black shales of the Clevelan... more Profiles of Mo/total organic carbon (TOC) through the Lower Toarcian black shales of the Cleveland Basin, Yorkshire, United Kingdom, and the Posidonia shale of Germany and Switzerland reveal water mass restriction during the interval from late tenuicostatum Zone times to early bifrons Zone times, times which include that of the putative Early Toarcian oceanic anoxic event. The degree of restriction is revealed by crossplots of Mo and TOC concentrations for the Cleveland Basin, which define two linear arrays with regression slopes (ppm/%) of 0.5 and 17. The slope of 0.5 applies to sediment from the upper semicelatum and exaratum Subzones. This value, which is one tenth of that for modern sediments from the Black Sea (Mo/TOC regression slope 4.5), reveals that water mass restriction during this interval was around 10 times more severe than in the modern Black Sea; the renewal frequency of the water mass was between 4 and 40 ka. The Mo/TOC regression slope of 17 applies to the overlying falciferum and commune subzones: the value shows that restriction in this interval was less severe and that the renewal frequency of the water mass was between 10 and 130 years. The more restricted of the two intervals has been termed the Early Toarcian oceanic anoxic event but is shown to be an event caused by basin restriction local to NW Europe. Crossplots of Re, Os, and Mo against TOC show similar trends of increasing element concentration with increase in TOC but with differing slopes. Together with modeling of 187Os/188Os and d98Mo, the element/TOC trends show that drawdown of Re, Os, and Mo was essentially complete during upper semicelatum and exaratum Subzone times (Mo/TOC regression slope of 0.5). Drawdown sensitized the restricted water mass to isotopic change forced by freshwater mixing so that continental inputs of Re, Os, and Mo, via a low-salinity surface layer, created isotopic excursions of up to 1.3 per mil in d98Mo and up to 0.6 per mil for 187Os/188Os. Restriction thereby compromises attempts to date Toarcian black [...]
Earth Sciences History, 2007
Progress in measurement of the force of gravity and its contribution to the understanding of geol... more Progress in measurement of the force of gravity and its contribution to the understanding of geology, and to exploration for oil and mineral deposits, from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century is reviewed. Initially, work focused on determination of the mean density of the Earth. Pendulum observations during the trigonometric survey of India (1805-43) revealed a low-density zone beneath the Himalayas and led to development of the Pratt and Airy compensation models in 1855, followed by Dutton's concept of isostatic compensation in 1889. Use of the Eötvös torsion balance (1889) to map the gravity field over an oil-bearing structure in 1915-16 heralded economic applications. By the 1920s, it was being widely used to search for oil-bearing salt domes, coal and mineral deposits. With the introduction of the gravity meter in the 1930s, the torsion balance fell into disuse and the modern era of gravity surveying and prospecting began. With the development of progressively more sensitive instruments, the gravity meter has retained its place, becoming an essential companion to 3-D seismic surveys and, with new instrumentation, gradiometry has seen a revival as an extremely powerful exploration tool.
Earth Sciences History, 2020
The origin and usage through time of geologia, geognosy, geogony, oryctognosy, geology and geophy... more The origin and usage through time of geologia, geognosy, geogony, oryctognosy, geology and geophysics, as characterised by their frequency of occurrence in the Google Books Ngram Corpus, is discussed. The English, French, German, Italian and Spanish corpuses used in this study have been normalised over the same timespan using the average frequencies of occurrence of the same set of ‘neutral’ words in each language (as advocated by Younes and Reips 2019). Use of the term geology is found to predate publication of James Hutton's Theory of the Earth in 1795 by about 100 years; geognosy, oryctognosy and geogony, much less commonly used, became established in the 1780s and began to fall out of use around 1820. The terms geologist, and geognost follow a similar pattern. The emergence of geophysics is a less familiar field: While the phrases physics of the Earth and physical geography can both be traced back to the early 1700s, geophysics only began to be used in the early 1800s and di...
Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, 2019
The American mathematician Robert Jackson Adcock (1826–1895) is an obscure figure, hitherto assoc... more The American mathematician Robert Jackson Adcock (1826–1895) is an obscure figure, hitherto associated with the history of regression analysis and least-squares, whose identity and life are described in Part II of this work. In 1872, he self-published a pamphlet, ‘Gravitation to the sphere and the two ellipsoids of revolution: ratio of the axes of a rotating fluid mass’, which seems to have been largely ignored at the time. It effectively became lost thereafter, until a copy was recently discovered in the Library of the Royal Society. In it, he determined the degree of flattening assumed by a rotating homogeneous ellipsoidal fluid Earth with a uniform density, subject to gravitational attraction and in hydrostatic equilibrium—a problem previously considered, but not solved, by Newton, Laplace, Gauss and Dirichlet. Adcock successfully obtained an explicit solution for the potential of a homogeneous ellipsoid and correctly calculated the flattening of such a model. Until now, this res...
The Curry Fund of the Geologists' Association provides support for geological publications and ge... more The Curry Fund of the Geologists' Association provides support for geological publications and geological conservation projects, also contingency funding for other geologically based initiatives, either from groups or individuals. Rockwatch is the national geology club for children and is the junior arm of the Geologists' Association. It publishes a magazine three times a year, organizes field trips around the country and runs 'hands-on' family days in museums and universities.
Terra Nova, 1995
ABSTRACTIn 140 metres of Maastrichtian White Chalk (nannofossil chalk) exposed near Hemmoor, NW G... more ABSTRACTIn 140 metres of Maastrichtian White Chalk (nannofossil chalk) exposed near Hemmoor, NW Germany, values of 87Sr/86Sr increase from 0.707760 in the Belemnella sumensis Zone (Lower Maastrichtian) at the base of the section (‐54.5 m; referred to 0 m at a prominent marl, M900) to 0.707821 in the Belemnella baltica/danica Zone (Upper Maastrichtian) at the top of the section (+84.5 m). A plateau in 87Sr/86Sr occurs between ‐5m and +50m in the section, probably as a result of a very high rate of sedimentation in this interval. A belemnite and associated nannofossil chalk have similar 87Sr/86Sr values, suggesting that there has been little diagenetic alteration of the 87Sr/86Sr ratios in the chalk, which therefore preserves its original 87Sr/86Sr. Comparison of 87Sr/86Sr and nannofossil zonations for sequences at Bidart, France, and DSDP Sites reveals discordance and so possible diachronism of the basal boundaries of nannofossil Zones CC25B and CC25C.
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Papers by Richard Howarth